Maria Eagle – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Maria Eagle on 2016-01-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, on what the £1 million funding provided to the City of Hull to create a legacy as part of its status as the 2017 UK City of Culture was spent.

Mr Edward Vaizey

Of the £1 million extra funding announced in November 2015, half will support the Hull Culture Company to make the 2017 City of Culture year a sucess, and to produce benefits for the local community beyond 2017, ensuring that arts and culture remain at the heart of the local authority’s strategy, and encouraging young people and hard to reach groups to engage with the artistic programme. The remaining 0.5m of this funding will support the promotion and management of the UK City of Culture 2021 competition.

DCMS is investing £1.5 million in the Ferens Gallery to help them host the Turner Prize that year, and the Gallery will receive a further £0.5m from ACE for refurbishment. Arts Council England is also providing £3.1 million to three ACE-funded organisations -Artlink, Freedom Festival and Hull Truck Theatre – that will play a key role in the 2017 events. Hull Museums, now among ACE’s Major Partner Museums, have been awarded £2.5m between now and 2018; and an extra £3 million from ACE will help raise the profile of culture in the city and promote new partnerships throughout 2017. This amounts to over £11 million and does not include additional investment that may come from other bodies such as the BBC.